$3.5M transfer of funds to aid Salem County Nursing Home approved by freeholders in 4 to 3 vote along party lines

Staff photo by Paul LutesThe Salem County Board of Chosen Freeholders has voted, along party lines, to transfer $3.5 million from the count landfill surplus fund to help ease the county nursing home's debt.

SALEM — The Salem County Board of Chosen Freeholders has voted along party lines to approve a transfer of $3.5 million to cover an increasing deficit facing the county nursing home.

The money to cover the nursing home debt was taken from the Salem County Landfill surplus. The transfer was approved 4 to 3 with all Republican members of the board opposed to the move.

Salem County Improvement Authority Chair Michael Burke said SCIA is doing what it can to make cuts at the nursing home, but increasing operating costs make the transfer necessary.

“Our biggest cost is employees,” said Burke.

SCIA operates both the nursing home in Mannington and the landfill in Alloway Township.

He said most business plans allocate 30 percent of their budget for employee expenses. The nursing home budget is reaching 65 percent for employees and their benefits and insurance, he said.

“You can’t operate a business like that,” said Burke. “But we are looking at additional cuts.”

Burke said ultimately the decision may be to privatize the home.

“It’s a reality,” he said. “But we could always put stipulations on the RFP (request for proposal) that the buyer would need to keep 50 beds for Medicaid (patients) and keep 50 percent of the employees.”

The exact amount transferred out of the landfill operations surplus fund was $3,586,875.

Currently, Burke said the landfill has approximately $9 million in surplus, but most of this is being saved for the pending expansion of the landfill on McKillip Road in Alloway Township.

Burke said the estimated cost to close and cap off the existing operating portion of the landfill and open a new section could be in the range of $5 to $10 million.

“We were hoping to pay cash, so we wouldn’t have to go out for bonding,” he said.

All three Republican freeholders voted against the resolution authorizing the transfer. At the board’s meeting Wednesday night they claimed they were reluctant to agree because they had yet to see any financial documents from the Improvement Authority on the nursing home.

“At the Dec. 1 meeting he (Burke) said he would be asking for the funds in the near future, we didn’t know when” said Freeholder Dale Cross. “All we were given to justify the transfer were raw numbers.”

Cross said he would have liked to hold off until the freeholders’ Dec. 29 close-out meeting to vote on the resolution. This way the freeholders would have had more time to look at some hard numbers, he said.

“We all could make a more educated decision that way,” Cross said.

Cross said the freeholder board is rarely presented with budget information from the Improvement Authority, so Burke’s presentation at the Dec. 1 meeting was not enough to justify the $3.5 million transfer.

“We are committed to the care of the elderly of this community and the people earning a living working at the nursing home are paramount,” he said. “I’m sure we would have found a way to get the transfer approved at the Dec. 29 meeting.”

Burke said the Republican dissension was about showboating and politics, which he understands is part of the equation when you are working in government.

He said at the Dec. 1 freeholder meeting he let the board know about the transfer and if the members had any concerns they should contact him.

“I even took it to another level a week before the (Dec. 15) meeting and I called every freeholder to see if they had any questions,” Burke said. ”They didn’t voice any of these concerns.”

Cross said at that time he was not provided with the right numbers and he still was conducting research.

At the meeting Freeholder Director Lee Ware said at this time the county is not in a position to support the nursing home financially.

“We are ready to assist the Improvement Authority anyway we can to work through a reasonable and affordable solution,” said Ware. “Many counties across the state are faced with these same issues.”

Ware said Mercer County sold its nursing home after losing on average $4 million yearly.

“They were able to sell their (nursing) home, retain a large portion of the employees and guarantee a sizable percentage of their beds would be dedicated to Medicaid clients,” Ware said.

“By no means is selling the (nursing) home the only answer, but it is certainly one that needs to be carefully looked at.”